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Today’s graduate education should provide students with technical specialization and professional skills to holistically prepare them as genuine leaders, ready to address today’s complex and ethical dilemmas in the workplace. Inclusion of professional development complements their technical specialty by providing opportunities to develop successful, self-aware, authentic leadership within their fields. One way to develop these skills is through an interdisciplinary, online leadership development course. This study examines the effectiveness of an online leadership course in building authentic leadership skills over five academic semesters. Scores on the authentic leadership measure show statistical significance between the pre- and post-tests, with positive effect sizes in transparency and self-awareness. Results suggest that this online course, focused on personal and professional development, improves students’ understanding of themselves and the world around them and capacity to gain the trust of their followers.

The recent global COVID-19 pandemic has forced many institutions of higher education to place added consideration and focus on their virtual instruction, causing instructors to rethink their pedagogical approaches (Murphy, et al., 2020). While new pedagogical technologies are being introduced in higher education (Baker, et al. 2008), not all approaches have produced beneficial results (Heilesen, 2010). Could this new learning medium serve as an effective tool for student learning outcomes and comprehension of course concepts? The current study presents attempts to answer these questions through its exploration of student perceptions and impact of podcasting as an instructional tool within four undergraduate leadership courses. Through the use of podcasting as a means of supplemental content and assessment, these cases provide educators with foundational guidance and recommendations on how to most effectively implement different ways of podcasting into the classroom to achieve student learning outcomes. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of JOLE and look ahead to the next twenty years, the authors suggest that one of the most important tasks for leadership educators will not only be to recognize opportunities presented by technological advances in teaching and learning (Gigliotti & Ruben, 2017), but also the use of these new technologies to meet the needs of a changed student population in a post-global pandemic world.